Broadband News

BT Wholesale reduces minimum contract period...

BT Wholesale has, via Oftel, announced that the minimum contract on the BT IPstream 500 and BT IPstream S ranges (engineer installed products) has now dropped from twelve months to just 90 days.
This change applies to all new and existing lines in that product range. The question is whether any ISPs will pass this onto their customers, or keep customers to the contract term that they
previously signed up for.

This news comes from the regular Oftel ADSL update, which can be seen here.

In other news, there are around 367,000 ADSL lines in the UK. Around 10,000 of these are provided by Kingston Communications. The old BT IPstream 500 service (home engineer installed product) is
due for withdrawal around Q3 2002/2003 and any remaining users will be migrated to the BT IPstream Home 500 product.

Customers with the Office product ranges, i.e. BT IPstream S or BT IPstream Office products now have the option of CustomCare on their lines. The second stage of this trial will be to introduce
TotalCare which gives 24/7 repair coverage. Of course this all comes at a price, which runs to around £10/month per line at present. The trial is due to run until early 2003 when it will
launch as a full service.